It's been a while since I last updated my list of most accomplished/successful tennis players. Now I decided to give it another try.
Establishing criteria according to which players performance should be evaluated was obviously the hardest task. Still, I think I did a fairly good job to come up with the ranking system like this:

I think you could safely expand this to the mid-80s. Would be interesting what comes out, i.e., how Lendl, Edberg, Becker match up vis-a-vis the guys you have.

Stretching if further back is difficiult due to the different status of the Aussie Open and other tournaments in the 70s/early 80s.

Btw, I think at the end of a day a player's status in history is determined by the slams and little else. Thus a column with "slams only" could make sense (maybe the result aren't that different). You may also wish to reconsider your weigting system, you have SF=3QFs (OK), F=5SFs (a bit stiff), W=3.3Fs. An equal weight of, say, 3 is simpler and as such may be more compelling.

Nice table.
Beating a top 10 player in the first round of the Australian open is worth the same as winning the olympics?This counts masters, olympics way too little.
How would this look if you used the ATP current point system?

Well I would argue this counts Masters etc. too much. For example, I don't think many people would have Chang above two-time slam champions Safin and Rafter in their all-time rankings. In this table Chang gets all the mileage putting him past these guys out of lower-ranked tournaments.

In the wider realm of things Masters (and other) tournaments are warm-ups to slams, no more.

So according to this, Murray is the best player in the last 20 years to not win a GS?

Make this the best of the entire open era (=from 1968) to never win a slam. There is no similarly accomplished male player. Todd Martin, Cedric Pioline, Miroslav Mecir, Alex Corretja, Kevin Curren are probably the next names, they are all half a notch below Murray. You have to go to the ladies to find comparable examples (Helena Sukova, Mary Joe Fernandez, Wendy Turnbull).

Murray is just a tad unfortunate to play in this era with three unusually consistent top dogs.

I think i understand that table very good, when you look at it. Agassi is over Nadal, because this probably based on total accumulated points for their careers and Agassi had a very long career, playing million matches, a lot of years more than Nadal, that means that Agassi how you can see had a lot more SF, QF at slams which is logical with that time they both spend on the tour. Nadal is probably greater player overall and has accomplished already more but if we want to accumulate points for their careers it is clear Agassi must have the edge, because he played so many years more than Nadal at this point of his career.

Korda on list but not ranked because he was most probably on druds during his inexplicable rise back to the top in the end 1997/ beginning of 1998.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Henry Kaspar

I think you could safely expand this to the mid-80s. Would be interesting what comes out, i.e., how Lendl, Edberg, Becker match up vis-a-vis the guys you have.

Btw, I think at the end of a day a player's status in history is determined by the slams and little else. Thus a column with "slams only" could make sense (maybe the result aren't that different). You may also wish to reconsider your weigting system, you have SF=3QFs (OK), F=5SFs (a bit stiff), W=3.3Fs. An equal weight of, say, 3 is simpler and as such may be more compelling.

1) Top-10 wins data are not always available for tournaments held in mid-1980s. Besides, there were no Masters Series back then so Becker and Co would be at clear disadvantage (in terms of ranking points) against players of 90/2000s.

2) I thought about ranking players based only on GS and Masters Cups results first and using other results only as a tiebreaker. But, given how much weight slams (and particularly slam titles) have in my rankings, it would benefit immensely one slam wonders and punish those who were not "lucky" to win a slam but performed consistently and won a lot at regular tour events.

3) At first I thought about not awarding points for slam SFs and QFs at all. As for equal weight round by round, there are way too may cheap SF/QF runs at slams (without facing top-20 or even top-50 players) to make a slam SF worth as many points as Masters Series title, imo (and that would be the case if I went 1000-300-100 for GS W/F/SF).

Quote:

Originally Posted by oc2004

Nice table.
Beating a top 10 player in the first round of the Australian open is worth the same as winning the olympics?

This counts masters, olympics way too little.

How would this look if you used the ATP current point system?

Olympics draws before 2008 were of MM caliber (or they used to fall apart completely after R3 already), just check who champions had to defeat to win medals. As for points for GS Top-10 win being equal to points for a MM title, I think it's fair. We are talking about best players here, it's not like they were defeating top-tenners in opening rounds and losing to nobodies in the very next match.

Answering the question in bold: Chang and Roddick would overtake Kuerten easily and Kafelnikov, Ivanisevic and others would overtake Safin. Agassi would have even greater lead over Nadal.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Henry Kaspar

Well I think this counts Masters too much. For example, I don't think many people would have Chang above two-time slam champions Safin and Rafter in their all-time rankings. In this table Chang gets all the mileage putting him past these guys out of results at lower-ranked tournaments.

In the wider realm of things Masters (and other) tournaments are warm-ups to slams, no more.

In my rankings Masters title is worth only one tenth of a Grand Slam title (it's 50% in ATP rankings). Chang gained his lead over Safin thanks mostly to shitload of MM titles. And I see no problem at all with Chang being ranked above Rafter.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Julio

Roddick in Top 10.

Roddick has been an uber-consistent performer both at slams (bar RG) and other tournaments. His consistency can't be ignored.

Korda on list but not ranked because he was most probably on druds during his inexplicable rise back to the top in the end 1997/ beginning of 1998.

1) Top-10 wins data are not always available for tournaments held in mid-1980s. Besides, there were no Masters Series back then so Becker and Co would be at clear disadvantage (in terms of ranking points) against players of 90/2000s.

2) I thought about ranking players based only on GS and Masters Cups results first and using other results only as a tiebreaker. But, given how much weight slams (and particularly slam titles) have in my rankings, it would benefit immensely one slam wonders and punish those who were not "lucky" to win a slam but performed consistently and won a lot at regular tour events.

3) At first I thought about not awarding points for slam SFs and QFs at all. As for equal weight round by round, there are way too may cheap SF/QF runs at slams (without facing top-20 or even top-50 players) to make a slam SF worth as many points as Masters Series title, imo (and that would be the case if I went 1000-300-100 for GS W/F/SF).

Olympics draws before 2008 were of MM caliber (or they used to fall apart completely after R3 already), just check who champions had to defeat to win medals. As for points for GS Top-10 win being equal to points for a MM title, I think it's fair. We are talking about best players here, it's not like they were defeating top-tenners in opening rounds and losing to nobodies in the very next match.

Answering the question in bold: Chang and Roddick would overtake Kuerten easily and Kafelnikov, Ivanisevic and others would overtake Safin. Agassi would have even greater lead over Nadal.

In my rankings Masters title is worth only one tenth of a Grand Slam title (it's 50% in ATP rankings). Chang gained his lead over Safin thanks mostly to shitload of MM titles. And I see no problem at all with Chang being ranked above Rafter.

Roddick has been an uber-consistent performer both at slams (bar RG) and other tournaments. His consistency can't be ignored.

Take it easy, buddy. I'm not saying tere is anything fundamentally wrong with your ranking, these are matters of taste more than anything else. Take my comments as friendly and interested observations from a fellow rankings and stats aficionado (there is a top 101 list of the open era on my page, linked up in my signature)